The Cool Boys In The Back Of Thebus

Literotica would like me to tell you the age of everyone. In German high school back when I went there, there were thirteen grades from kindergarten to college instead of the international twelve. So, everyone in the last year of college was nineteen or twenty. I don't know how old the teachers were. However, we can safely assume that they had to finish college before teaching. They must have been older. If necessary, I'll invent an ago for them. Though, I'd prefer to stay truthful.

Everyone was old enough. There is no underage sex. Okay, the spider that crawled down the wall in the hostel room was only two month old. However, nobody even noticed her. She was never touched, let alone involved in anything sexual. She also only saw us fully closed.

To understand our class, you have to understand a little about the German education system. Up to grade eleven, everyone is stuffed into a class. There was 11a and 11b. We had separate classes. At the beginning everyone is thrown together into one big pool. Rather than having a fixed class schedule, anyone can choose the classes they want. It's a little taste of college, where people specialize on subjects.

Our earliest taste of choice was choosing between French and Latin as a second foreign language. 11a had French. 11b had Latin. The choice was super easy for me. Who learns a dead language? There is no country to visit that speaks Latin. Everyone else in my class thought so as well. The kids in 11b were serious nerds that learned Latin simply to understand the principle of language better.

The first thing I remember about class 11b was the incredible stench. When we walked into their room, a horrible, nasty stench hung in the air. That day I learned that working hard makes people stink. All the stress of thinking hard made them sweet with stress. They were crunching complicated grammar rules, while we learned to crack jokes in French. We brought cake to French class and learned about social trends of French teenagers. It was a blast.

Naturally, there was a clash between the two classes. We were the cool kids that went out to bars and clubs. They were the nerds that only talked in hushed sounds with each other about homework. They wanted nothing but be left alone by the crazy, out-of-control bunch that we were. We thought of them as losers that we couldn't care less about.

One of the leaders in our class was Sonya. She was blond. She dressed every day in a new set of clothes. Most of us kids had to cycle through a set of five or so outfits. Her parents were loaded. One day, she told us about how she got a piano. The piano was so big that it didn't fit up the stairs. So, they had to remove the window and door from her balcony to hoist the whole thing with a crane into her room. Crazy! My ma wouldn't even pay drumming lessons for me.

What she was most loved for was how outspoken and articulate she was. Even the nerd kids loved listening to her arguments. For example in ethics class, we talked about abortion. My opinion was cut and dry. It's the woman's body. She has the absolute choice over aborting or not. Sonya vehemently disagreed. She said that in a relationship, it is important what everyone thinks and feels. I argued against her in class. However at home, I thought about it. The whole concept of something caring what I think and feel and even talking about it was so mature. It was a whole new thing that I hadn't thought about.

You should also know about our teacher Sparrow, because she accompanied us on the school trip (more later). She was a young, liberal teacher that cared with a super trendy haircut. She had black hair that was cut to look like a feminine paige haircut -- a long line of hair hanging down the side that started at the chin level and tapered shorter toward the back. She really cared about us kids engaging and was personally offended, when we goofed off.

One day, we were particular loud and engrossed in talking amongst ourselves. She stopped talking. She simply didn't say anything anymore. It took a minute or two until anyone noticed. Well, that is anyone originally from class 11a. 11b were quiet as lambs as always. From the first person pointing it out to everyone noticing that person pointing out, it probably took another minute or two.

And then we sat there in silence, not quite sure what was going on. She starred at us. We starred at her. She crossed her legs and arms and dug in leaning way back in her chair. We figured that she'd talk after a few minutes and lecture us. When she didn't talk after ten minutes, we grew very pale, because we were in deep shit. We didn't dare whisper or breathe. We thought that this time we had fucked up for real.

The silence went on for half hour. Then some geek from class 11b raised his arm. She only gloated at him. He weakly said that he was interested to hear the end of her argument on the composition of poems during the literary epoche of "Sturm und Drang." I have no fucking clue what that even meant. I had stopped paying attention a few classes back. Ms. Sparrow nodded slowly and then gave him the answer.

When she finished, she asked us about what had happened and that she was really hurt. Sonya was the first to talk and make up with the teacher. After class, Sonya championed that we buy chocolate for the teacher as an apology. Sonya was a leader. Most of the kids listened to her.

The few kids that got barely any pocket allowance from their parents to have lunch food were hesitant. However, my buddies and I had a talk with them. We weren't mean bullies. However, the light disappeared when we towered over the nerd kids. And they were simply questioning if their own belly had really all that good of an argument. They realized that they had nothing going on at home. They didn't have cool haircuts. They had no friends. And we had friends. We had cool haircuts. We knew about fashion. We knew about music. That's a lot of social pressure to stand up against. And those little geeks didn't have a backbone. So, they handed Sonya their lunch money to buy a box of chocolate.

Next class, Ms. Sparrow was so touched that she cried a little. She looked at the box of chocolate and said that as a state worker she could not accept gifts. So, she passed the chocolate out to us, not before picking out her favorite with pointed finger and a glorious sunshine smile on her lips. That's Sonya. That's why she is a leader. That's Ms. Sparrow. That's why we love her and voted for her to join our final class trip.

For our final trip of high school, we petitioned to go to Berlin, the amazing metropolis with world class bars, clubs, and museums. Mr. Shepherd was in charge of organizing the class trip. He was cut from an entirely different cloth than Ms. Sparrow. He had a PhD in chemistry. Having a PhD, he always felt better than the other teachers and was way too ambitious. Substance abuse was his pet cause.

He was trying to force every student for zero drug and alcohol use. When he gave us a talk about drugs, he glared into the class while asking if anyone had any experience with drugs. Class 11a over the years had been infamous across the entire town for being potheads. We were tensely quiet. A geek guy from class 11b raised his hand, "I have a friend that I think might have tried marijuana once." The joke was that the geek was so innocent that he was talking about a real friend, not a hypothetical friend. Mr. Shepherd having only this guy talk to him, spent an entire hour talking about that guy's friend. At least two guys from 11a must have still been high from recess behind the bushes.

Mr. Shepherd gave us a choice about the final trip. We could go to Berlin. However, he would keep us on a very tight leash without any unsupervised free time and early curfew. The big city was too dangerous to let us roam wild. On the other hand, we could go with him to a kayaking trip in the South of France. In the rural safety, he'd give us free run to explore the provincial cities and country side. He said that he realized that they were over sixteen and that there would be drinking. He'd let us go to bars and order wine in the restaurant.

You have to know a little bit about drinking laws in Germany. Drinking age for soft alcohol like wine and beer is 16. Had liquor requires 18. Here in America, drinking laws are strictly enforced by the bouncer, because the bar owner risks losing the liquor license. In Germany, people are very rule driven. So, there is no need to enforce such laws. However, bar owners aren't as hardcore terrified about making a mistake, at least back then. They'd eye ball you and never ask for a driver's license.

So, we teenagers would all file into bars with sixteen. We'd drink until we puked. Once we puked the toilet full, one time a buddy left a puke trail from the restroom entrance to the toilet, we'd go back to our buddies. With an empty stomach, we'd sober up after half hour or so. At which point, we'd drink again until puking. Going through two or three cycles was a good night. Going beyond that was hardcore. The waiter didn't give a fuck. If you were lying under the table, could still raise a hand, and pay, you'd still get served.

Here in America, bars are supposed to keep people on premise until they are sober enough to leave. If a patron gets into an accident drunk, the bar can be held liable for letting him leave. Spending a few years of my youth in Germany was quite an experience.

Naturally given the choice between Berlin under house arrest and Southern France with freedom, we chose freedom. Mr. Bernd was the third teacher to chaperon us on the trip. He was a math teacher. He was a geek that had never really grown into an authority figure. His hair was a tangled mess. He dressed sloppy. He was engrossed in math on his black board. He ignored any fighting or arguing that might be going on in the class room. He just wanted to get along.

One time, he joined a few of us inner tubing on an inner city water canal. Our city used to be a textile manufacturing center during the industrial revolution. Textile manufacturing required a lot of water that would get heavily polluted. The industry is offshore now. However, the water canals remained. They made for wonderful fun during summer.

As we drifted down the water canal, we spread out. We'd eventually all meet up under the big reservoir under the railroad bridge. This part of town was an abandoned inner city park with wonderfully tall trees. The light filtered through in between the crown of the trees. You could feel peace under the canopy of trees and the pacifying water sound. Up ahead, we heard screaming.

Mr. Shepherd's afternoon routine was to patrol the channel. There were certain sections of the water canal that were reserved for kayak clubs for serious competitive training. Mr. Shepherd was screaming at our buddies to get out of the water now. He threatened with detention in school and calling the police. Back then, we didn't have cell phones. He'd have to walk for at least twenty minutes to reach the boundary of the inner city park. Any random guy, we would have flipped off. With Mr. Shepherd, we weren't sure, because we had to face him back at school and during grading time.

This time, Mr. Bernd was with us. He was smiling like a happy Labrador, oblivious of Mr. Shepherd's patrols. When Mr. Shepherd saw Mr. Bernd drifting along on the inner tube, he was silenced. All the yelling energy turned into redness in his face. His face turned so red that it turned purple. Mr. Bernd jumped off his inner tube and got out. Mr. Shepherd walked away without saying a word. The two never talked about it. We kids talked about Mr. Shepherd having eaten it all the time.

Before I get to what happened in the back of the bus, let me tell you a little bit about myself. Now, that I'm older, I know how to do things, and I have learned what not to do. It's simply a function of age. When we are young, we don't know better. We get these crazy ideas. We try them out. We get consequences. We stop doing it. Back then we do things for the first time. We try anything. It's rough. It's awkward. We either give up on it or get smooth about it. Life gets boring that way.

Back on our trip, we had spent an entire night on a bus driving from Germany to the South of France. The bus was pulling a wagon with kayaks across half of Europe. We arrived on a cloudy rainy day. The river had swollen high. On the first day, the teachers canceled our kayaking tour that day. They wanted to evaluate the river. So, we drove along the river in the bus. The river meandered among steep hills. There was nothing but bushes and trees on those hills. We watched the brown mass of water swirling way down.

In the afternoon, the teachers made a stop middle in nowhere for a little walk. It was a wasteland of weed, river flooded land, and road side. The front of the group found a walnut tree. Everyone started picking walnuts from the ground and crushing them. It was local custom to snack wild strawberry patches and raspberry bushes.

I had always been ambitious. I saw three water melons growing nearby. I figured that they were snacking, I might snack as well. So, I pulled a big water melon off the ground. There was a tangle of vines holding the water melon down. I got it free. I was very proud of myself to be a leader and bring the prize home. When Mr. Shepherd said, "you better quickly get on the bus, before a farmer comes running with a pitchfork," I realized that I had committed a theft.

I felt so tormented by guilt for being a thief. I couldn't even hide the water melon. It was large and heavy on my lap. I could not toss it out of the window, because the bus windows did not open. I was trapped with my sin for hours. Mind you, I went through a phase of been a born again Christian. I had sent letters to anyone whom I had ever wronged. Now, I was a thief not even knowing whom to apologize to. I felt horribly rotten.

When we finally arrived at the youth hostel in the evening, I did not know what to do or how to get rid of the water melon. The water melon was even too large for the small trash cans in the room. Mentally, I was so exhausted that I couldn't think straight anymore. One of my buddies luckily had a knife and opened up the thing. It was entirely white inside. I was shocked. It was hard to grasp that there wasn't even a hint of red inside. I was so stupid that I had even stolen an unripe water melon.

Luckily the buddy thought it would be fun to toss it off a bridge and watch it drift away. That made me feel so much better, because he was the only one not judging me for it. I had seen those eyes of everyone looking me lugging that big ol' watermelon around everywhere I went. So, we stood in the rain and tossed the thing over the railing of the bridge. I felt so relieved.

The buddy was Steve. He was a quiet guy. He didn't quite align with the rest of our clique. Yet, he was part of it. He had a metal tooth which he was fond of demonstrating. He'd bite into hard things to show that his metal was tougher than a natural tooth. The metal tooth was from a fight. Randomly, he'd just start punching people. He never had a mean thing against us. He usually picked a random, spaced out guy and let him have a few bone crushing blows. Twenty seconds later, he'd walk away as if nothing had happened and was his usual quiet self. He was never out of breath or riled up, when he'd walk back to our circle. It was just his thing. One time, a guy had fought back and knocked out his tooth. He never complained about it. It never bothered him, when his victims fought back and even hurt him. He was very accepting that way.

To give you a sense of what happened on that trip outside of kayaking, which was awesome, let me tell you about our first free afternoon. The first stop was of course the supermarket. We had to walk down a long tree-lined rural street from the youth hostel. Remember, Mr. Shepherd had made sure that we were rural. After half hour of walking aside the road with no sidewalk, we arrived at a small supermarket.

Of course, it had beer. We had planned on getting a six pack or two. They had eight packs there. Mark found a twenty-pack! Those French are crazy. Mark bought it of course. A twenty pack was completely weird. The bottles were even weird. They were big round bulges rather than a bottle shape. They had blue glass. God knows he came up with that idea. Mark had to have it.

Mark was one of the cool guys. It mostly had to do with his dad who was a banker. Being a banker, his dad had the coolest car. It was a BMW with twelve speakers. He was the first to use a cell phone. He called all of us from his dad's cell phone to tell us that he was standing in a wide open field, while we were attached to the telephone wire. His dad also bought him a Playboy subscription. Naturally, all of us guys were hanging out at his house, when the new Playboy came out.

With all the beer at the cash register, I saw the cruelest thing of the whole trip. French baguette is not simply food. It's a symbol of joie de vivre. Anytime, we have French baguette back in Germany, we think of how the French know to enjoy life, their famous hour long family banquettes. We celebrate the awkward long shape. Any time, a baguette sticks out of a grocery bag, we nod knowingly. Any time, a baguette is put crosswise on the back of a bicycle to hit everything along the side of the bike road, we give the rider a thumbs up. At the checkout, the cashier mindlessly took the baguette of a customer and folded it in half to make it fit into the grocery bag. I nearly fell over for witnessing such sacrilege. Baguettes were normal loafs of bread here. And seemingly, people believed that the inventor of a baguette should have been shot for coming up with the idiotic shape!

We brought back our loot to the youth hostel. There was an abandoned ruin of a medieval building next door to the youth hostel. Someone had put a table and bench into it. That's where we put down all of our beer packs. Pretty quickly, there were bottles everywhere spread out. We spend the whole afternoon drinking. We freely shared with any classmates that wondered by. Ms. Sparrow came by and with pride about being cool enough to hang with the youngins, asked us for a beer. We were stoked to give her a beer. She sat down. We had a good chat.

Mr. Bernd came to check us out as well. He had brought his own beer. It was a special local microbrewery. He told us the story of how a knight was given the brewery for leading some medieval charge into a battle. It was awesome. Middle in it, Mr. Shepherd visited. He saw Mr. Bernd and said nothing. His face said everything to him. He turned to us, "I know that there would be drinking. Simply keep it tidy."

We had snacks, magazines, empty bottles spread all over the table and floor. We made a fuzz of cleaning up until the moment Mr. Shepherd turned around. Mr. Bernd had waited for that moment as well to slink away.

Okay, it's time for the story. The story happened at the end of the trip. We were back on the bus on our 10+ hours trip to Germany. It was late at night. Everyone was quiet, mostly sleeping. The light in the bus was dimmed. The freeway lights were spaced out far. Every time, we passed a freeway street light, the orange light would trail from the front to the back of the bus. The teachers were up front. Then, were the original students from class 11b. The few of them that were awake were either reading a serious book or playing chess. And the original 11a students were in the back. Us as the leaders of 11a had the back to us.

While everyone else was fatigued from the trip, we were even fired up by all the social interaction and adventures. Mark, Steven, and I had claimed the row of five seats at the very end of the bus. Sonya was one row ahead of us and turned back to talk to us. Next to her was Jones.